The Ballad of Curt and Maxwell
by L.ithJayhawk
Summary: Curt loses Brian, but things aren't over yet. Two strange parting gifts and a request lead Wild to discover the true secret of Maxwell Demon... Complete, rehabed, and illustrated, see the homepage in my profile.
1. Chapter One

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THE BALLAD OF CURT AND MAXWELL

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Yes, Brian does actually die in this version, rather than killing off "Maxwell." No, Curt doesn't entirely leave before the assassination concert. Contractually, he can't, you'll find out. Few other quirks, but y'know… that's creative license. This is the overhauled version, hopefully free from errors now and with some nice little changes.

DISCLAIMER: I only wish I owned anything to do with Velvet Goldmine other than a copy of the soundtrack and the movie. Everybody and everything belongs to their respective persons, which sadly isn't me.

_Chapter One_

He was so distracted. I'd like to think it was because of our fight, but I found out it was so much more fucked up than that. Whatever came between us was like the _sprinkles_ on the icing on the cake. And that was one fuckin' huge cake, if you wanna make it like that. Everything with Brian was always over the top, twice as big and grand as it had to be.

He was staring at the mirror when I came in. This glare that was hard and blank at the same time, sitting there radiating anger and perfection.

"Are you ready to go?"

He turned to glower at me, eyes narrowed, undoubtedly at the harshness in my voice. I just crossed my arms and glared back.

"Well?"

The radio had been playing, some woman going on about these stupid assassination rumors and Brian only snapped at his assistant, "Turn it off. And leave."

The makeup artist, for fear of Brian's wrath,quickly did as she was commanded and scurried out, closing the door behind her. Locking me in with him.

"Curt."

He said to me, getting up, opening the case that contained his cocaine.

"Maxwell."

"No."

He started to move closer to me, setting down the coke without having taken any, and picked something up from the table as he came. Two packages, one wrapped in heavy gold paper, the other, slightly smaller, in black and silver.

I sneered at him.

"Brian, you're not making this go away by buying me a bunch of shit. Not this time."

But he still pressed them into my hands.

"No, Curt… take it. For after. When it's all done with."

I can't believe I didn't notice something wrong then, the way he'd said that. Maybe I hadn't wanted to. I hadn't wanted to stop being pissed off at him.

I took the presents, but I didn't open them.

"Fine."

"Thank you," he said, running a thumb along my jaw. I snapped back, but he kissed me anyway, gently. "I'll miss you… and don't hurt him."

And then he just walked off towards the stage, with me yelling after him.

"Brian, you fucking coked-out whore! I'm not going anywhere, you stupid bitch! I can't! Fuck you! Fuck you and Jerry! You've fuckin' lost it!"

He never looked back.

-+-

A minute later, I heard the shot.

Two hours later, they finally let me into the hospital room.

Brian was dead.

-+-

The tour was called off. As if I needed to say that. I wish it hadn't been.That meant I had to return to the flat we had once shared. I had to return to those empty halls, empty rooms, empty bed, empty sheets. There was still his touch, his color choices, the way he ordered and arranged things. Traces of Brian everywhere, but the man I loved nowhere.

I spent hours, days searching for him, going round and round the flat. Not like he was anywhere, or that I was expecting to find him. That's for crazy people. I don't know what I was trying to do, only that for a while, it made me feel better.

After that, it made me feel like shit, and I left. I went to a hotel, leaving all my stuff behind in that apartment. I couldn't bear to move anything. It had been Brian who had set everything up there. Maybe it was the heroin I'd taken up again, but to change anything he had done just felt like I was cosmically screwing with his perception of me. So the only thing I took with me was what Brian had specifically put into my hand- those two gifts, still in that flashy wrapping he had no doubt done himself, even with all those people at his beck and call. It wouldn't have been the perfect way he wanted if he hadn't done it himself. Nothing ever was.

I sat there on the hotel couch, staring at those two boxes on the little mass-produced coffee table. The last things Brian had ever given me, and I hadn't had the guts to open them. I was still afraid to, then. What does a man on the brink of suicide give his lover as parting gifts?

But he'd said to open them. After. So with a rising terror, I picked up the bigger one and tore off the gold paper. Inside was a black velvet jewelry box, which only left me wondering more about his reasoning. So I didn't open it. I set that aside, and picked up the black and silver package and peeled off the paper, more careful this time.

Inside was a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Brian's copy, from the way the pages were folded and certain lines were marked as I leafed through it. How many times had he integrated Wilde's words into his own? How pleased had he been when I'd used them, once? The book was brought to every hotel and vacation house we'd been to. If it got lost, Brian had thrown a fit, and would do so until THIS copy was found. There were no substitutes.

I couldn't take this from him. It wouldn't have been right, even though he did give it to me. Keeping something like that would make you sick.


	2. Chapter Two

DISCLAIMER: Excerpts from The Picture of Dorian Gray belong to Oscar Wilde, of course.

Chapter Two

His funeral was the next day. Why they waited so damn long, I'm not sure. Isn't it disrespectful or something to leave the dead unburied? Anyway, I didn't want to think of him when he wasn't buried. Wasn't alive.I was still trying to wash the memory of the scene in the hospital from my mind. I don't think I'll evergo backto a hospital… factories of death and pain, that's all they are.

They had wanted me to do the eulogy. I had refused. Truth was, if I had gotten up there… the people would have heard nothing but the sobs of a broken man. That's what I was, without Brian. That's all I could do throughout the entire thing, was just bawl like a sissy girl. He was so close to me, and so horribly far away.

It was a closed casket funeral. I think that's what really got to me; I couldn't understand why. He was so beautiful, and he tried so hard to be beautiful. It was his life. How could they simply close the lid on someone so stunning, even in death? How could they shut him away from the sun when all he'd ever sought was the spotlight? It broke my heart to see him lowered into the ground. I couldn't throw any dirt on him. I wouldn't help to lock him there, in the dark.

I waited for everyone to leave. Waited forever, as people started to drift off to their after parties or whatever the hell is supposed to happen after a funeral. I'd never stuck around long enough to find out. But for Brian, I waited until it was only me, Mandy, and the two men with shovels. They finished their job quickly and neatly and just left; it didn't matter to them who had died.

Then came the waiting contest between me and Mandy. We went on for hours, standing and staring, not speaking, until we were stiff and cold and it had begun to drizzle rain. Bitterly trying to prove who was more eaten away by grief.

In the end, it was me. Mandy turned away from her former husband's grave, raising a hand to her eyes a moment even though I wasn't sure there had really been tears there at that point, then saying to me,

"I'm sorry, Curt."

"Yeah… me too…"

Then I was alone with him, and I sat down beside the fresh dirt, ran my hand against the black marble headstone. Black and silver. Black and silver like the paper on the book. I pulled it out of my jacket pocket, staring a while at the painting pictured on the cover, flipping the pages a bit to see Brian's meticulous handwriting in the margins, the areas where he'd taken a highlighter to certain quotes he enjoyed. No, he couldn't be without this. I set it down by the flowers other mourners had left.

There had been something there, though, that I'd missed. A note stuck between the pages. I hadn't noticed it because of how perfectly sized it had been; perfectly cut to the book's dimensions. My rifling through the pages, though, had turned it loose, and it stuck out, looking just like one of the other pages. Afraid I'd fucked up one of Brian's most prized possessions, I picked up the book again, turned to that page, hoping there was some way to keep it from falling out.

It did come out, though, into my hand, as it had been meant to. Brian had intended for me to find it, no matter how well hidden. Maybe he thought I would have read the book after he died. He'd asked me to so many times. He told me it would help me understand. He was right in one way.

As soon as I figured out the page that had fallen was in Brian's handwriting, I quickly dropped the book, forgot about it. Brian's thoughts were more important. I read on, stumbling sometimes over his ornate lettering, which was of course exquisite but impractical.

**-+-**

_Curt, _

_By the time you find this, I am sure I will no longer be with you. I do plan on taking my life, darling, but don't fret; it's not because of you. I could never pin you with such a horrendous crime, so much guilt. No, I'm afraid it's all my own affair, really. I should never have let things go this far. I can't bear the shame of what I've done here, made a mockery of life, created something quite disastrous. It must end, Curt; therefore I must go. I will no longer allow Maxwell's will to be done through me._

_I am praying you will be able to better handle it. That said, I am afraid I must ask a terrible favor of you. I trust you will do it, out of respect for the dead, if nothing else, and I know you will be horribly offended that I've kept this from you. But it's very important you do not waste much time in opening the attic room of our flat._

_I love you, darling Curt. I'm sorry to have said those things to you in the studio. And I'm so sorry it had to come to this._

_Love,_

_Brian_

_P.S. - chapter XI, page 131_

**-+-**

I read the words. Read them again. Over and over until I'd practically memorized the contents of the note, and still I didn't understand what Brian asked of me. Simply to open the door to our attic? What could he be hiding up there? I'd never gone there, and I'm not sure he had either. After all, there was nothing exciting about an attic when you live in an expensively furnished flat. You didn't need one. I hoped the answer was in the book. At least he'd left some other reference, not that it helped much at that point.

Because when I opened the book, there was only half of one line highlighted on the page he'd listed:

"The garnet cast out demons…"


	3. Chapter Three

SHOUTOUTS:  
**Brownie** - You're a spazz. And no, me'n Maxwell aren't coming to get you on a Monday night. That's RIDING, duh! That said, DU BIST WUNDERBAR! Because you are my first reviewer, und you actually have reviewed… which I have not.  
**Shiva** - hehe… here's the update! I'm taking that as a note of interest! SIE SIND TOLL, weil you are my first outside of school reviewer! -purrs-

_Chapter Three_

The ride home was silent. Everything seemed silent then with Brian gone. I nearly gave up music entirely that first year after his suicide. Music had been Brian's thing. Mine too at first, but once Brian had touched something, caressed it with his excellence, it was his.

I had the note in hand all the way over; the book I had left at his grave. It was his after all. The quote was short; I could remember it without the book. Not that I knew what it was supposed to mean at that point. Garnet cast out demons? Brian was dead, Maxwell with him. I wished I was.

-+-

After checking out of the hotel, I reluctantly returned to the flat. There was a shitload of mail in the entryway, but I just kinda shoved it aside with my foot and went on. I had more important things to do than check out our outrageous bills for the month. Like figure out what the hell Brian was going on about the attic for in his note.

I went down the hallway to the back of the flat. Or the side. Whatever. You can imagine how the thing is laid out yourself; it doesn't really matter all that much. There were two doors, though. One at the bottom of the stairs to the attic and one at the top. The first one was unlocked, then I got all the way upstairs and found the second one wouldn't budge. Damn Brian. He had to make things difficult, didn't he? And I had no idea where that damn key would have been. I assumed they had come with the apartment, so who the hell knew where they'd been the last few months. I certainly didn't keep track of them.

Then again… the lock looked new. A lot newer than the other ones around the flat. They were antique, Brian had said. A lot of shit around this place was. Some of it I was afraid to even touch or use or sit on or whatever. But I still didn't have the key, new or not. So I headed back downstairs.

I must have torn that place apart looking for that damn thing. You'd think, with Brian being so neat, it would have been on the key rack, but I tried every damn one of them in the lock and none worked. So I started wrecking the place looking for where it might be hidden. I didn't have a system; I don't like order. Besides, Brian hadn't been following the rules of order this time around.

-+-

It got to be around midnight before I quit. I was getting hungry, not to mention fuckin' frustrated. So I called down to the front desk to get some food. It was a lot easier to send requests like that through the company that owned the flats. Or the people who worked for them, anyway.

"Hello, Vista Santa flats… this is Mr. Wild?"

"Yeah, it is."

"What can we do for you, sir?"

"Can you call somewhere and get me a pizza or something, send it up?"

"I can; just tell me what kind and where from. It's a bit late, isn't it, Mr. Wild?"

"Yeah, well. I was looking for a key all damn night."

"A key, sir?"

"Yeah, to the attic. Can't find it."

"Mr. Slade left a key here a the desk a few days before he left to…"

Oh Brian. So you were the logical one after all. I cut the man at the desk off.

"In that case, forget the pizza. Just bring up the key."

"Of course."

-+-

And a few minutes later, I had the key in hand, and I was alone again. Terrified again. You can't understand how really scary it is thinking about what a dead person could have left you locked in some secret attic. I decided it was going to be better to find out quick, just get it over with.


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Once again, I found myself at that second attic door, but this time the key turned easily in the lock, and the door just swung open with a slight click. And I stood there staring for quite a while. What had been bare attic space when we moved in had been converted, some time without my knowing, into a very modernized, almost space-age looking, living space. Everything was either black or chrome, with the exception of electric blue accents that matched the stunning shade of the carpet. The same shade as Brian's hair had been.

From what I could see, it was sort of a studio apartment type of space, with a bedroom of sorts sectioned off with a half-wall that flowed into a living room that flowed into a tiny kitchen. The rest was walled off; I guessed for a bathroom.

"What the hell, Brian…?"

There was a slight sound of movement from the "bedroom" area. I stepped further inside to get a better look, and over the low wall caught a glimpse of electric blue hair against black silk pillowcases. My heart jumped into my chest.

"Hello?"

Coming closer, so slowly, it was like a dream. I could make out Brian's unmistakable features, his soft lips, high cheekbones, long eyelashes. I think I stopped breathing. The bed's occupant opened his eyes.

They were black. Solid, glossy black. No iris, no white, no pupil. Just cold, hard, fiery blackness.

I stepped back, shocked.

The thing in the bed curled its lips back at me, snarled, baring bright-white fangs. Brian's exact teeth, except for the canines, which were noticeably longer and sharper than any human's. Humans can't growl like that, either. A hand with long black claws at the end of slender fingers threw back the covers, still snarling indignantly at me. I was frozen in that moment, staring at my lover's flawless body, so classically and gorgeously bare, only…

Brian never had wings, torn and bony, dragon-like, that he fanned out threateningly at me as he got up from the mattress. Brian never had a row of small, sharp spines along his back, going down his spine to the place where Brian never had a long tail that thrashed about in an expression of pure irritation.

I'm not ashamed to say I turned tail and ran then. Turned and bolted out of the upstairs flat, locked the door behind me. Who the hell wouldn't?

I had Maxwell goddamned Demon living in my attic.

**-+-**

I spent the rest of the night, the early hours of the morning, either shaking from nightmares if I fell asleep or just plain shaking. Maxwell Demon. Upstairs. Perfectly silent, not even footsteps, but how was I to trust that?

I had to get rid of him. Had to. There were so many reasons. How he'd changed Brian. What he'd done to our relationship. How he treated me, Brian's wife, Jerry, just people in general. How he forced Brian into madness great enough to commit suicide. How I was terrified of him.

Everything made so much sense now. Poor Brian. Who could take that pressure? Who could live with something like that in the back of their mind all the time? His little quirks clicked perfectly now.

And I could make some sense out of his last words to me. "I am praying you will better be able to handle it," "The garnet cast out demons." Maxwell had to be stopped. And Brian had chosen me to do it.

It's amazing how when something clicks, it _really_ clicks. I somehow knew that Brian wouldn't just send me into this unprepared, and I went to find that black velvet jewelry box that had been in the gold wrapping. What should I find inside but a leather collar, inlaid with pieces of garnet?

The knife was my idea.

**-+-**

By the next night, I had worked up the courage to return to the attic. Armed with the collar and my knife, I unlocked the door silently, looking around. I couldn't see the Demon from there. I had to come further inside.

Walking quietly, knife in hand, I moved a bit further inside. I noticed the lights were quite a bit dimmer than when I came in before, and it made me anxious. Like he was expecting me. Like he was trying to throw me off.

But no, I found him in bed again, and this time I caught him asleep. God, he almost looked innocent. Almost. Except for the fact that I could see the spines running up his neck, it could have been Brian sleeping in that bed.

I remembered then I had no plan on how I was going to get the collar on him and tight without waking him up. He was bound to wake up. And then he'd kill me. I almost backed out, then. A sane person would have.

A person mad with grief and anger would unbuckle the collar, start to slip one end carefully around the sleeping Demon's neck.

It brushed his skin and he twitched. Flinched, almost. Working carefully, I got the thing to where I could buckle it before I ran into trouble. The buckle rattled slightly as it slid over the eyes laid into the collar, and those black eyes shot open.

Everything happened fast then. No more of this sweating and dreading and shaking and trying to be still and quiet and not lose my nerve. Maxwell snarled and swiped at me with a clawed hand. I stabbed the knife forward with one hand and pulled the collar down chokingly tight with the other.

The knife sank into his shoulder, but the sound I heard was him gagging from the collar. He flinched, and that moment gave me the split second I needed to fully fasten the buckle, and dart out the door again.

Scratched and bleeding, but flooded with relief and this fuckin' crazy triumph, I made it back to my level of the apartment alive.


	5. Chapter Five

SHOUTOUTS:  
**Wiseupjanetweiss** - Just got your chp. 3 review as I posted chapter four! Double woot! I'm generating some interest! Ahhhh I love it! -basks in the attention-

Chapter Five

The next day was a guilt trip like no other. I spent the whole time thinking about the last thing Brian had said to me before he died.

"I'll miss you… and don't hurt him."

I'd gotten so carried away in getting rid of Maxwell I hadn't thought of that. Then it had struck me full-force, right after I'd come down from my high off of stabbing that bastard creature.

It tried to forget about it, but Maxwell wasn't letting me off easy. For the first time, I could hear him up there, gagging and coughing and retching and moaning in utter misery. I heard heavy thuds that were undoubtedly things being knocked over and falling to the floor. Those crashes only lasted a few minutes, but I could hear him up there for hours.

It was the weirdest thing, but I started feeling bad about what I'd done to him. It was a really shit way to die. But I couldn't bring myself to go up there again.

He carried on for three days like that. Three days before the upstairs apartment finally fell silent. Three days suffocating. Then I had to go figure out what to do with him now that he was dead.

**-+-**

I went upstairs to investigate the damage. There were spatters of blood all along the blue carpet, on one line from the bedroom to the bathroom. Some were old and dried on, others a bright, vibrant red, still wet. Fresh.

The bathroom door had been left open. I could see the end of Maxwell's tail curling just outside of it, feathered with long, fine hair like you'll see horses have on their feet sometimes. Electric blue, just like on his head.

I moved closer, stepping into the bathroom, and as soon as my foothad crossed the threshold,I heard this absolutely pathetic snarl from the floor. The poor bastard was still alive, can you believe that? Blood was caked on his shoulder, the knife still sunk in mostly as I had left it, and his heavy, rasping breathing had brought a pinkish, bloody foam to the corners of his mouth, but he still was clinging on to his miserable existance.

He snarled at me, warning me away, then he coughed, retched, and threw up what seemed to be mostly blood. Not onto the floor, into the toilet.

That was when I realized I wasn't just dealing with some stupid, senseless animal. 'Cause you can toilet-train cats, ferrets, dogs, rabbits or whatever you want to take a shit in a litter box. But I'll pay you a million bucks if you can show me anything with less than human intelligence that's _vomit_-trained of its own accord.

I could have just let him die if I hadn't seen that… but after it… it was too much like killing another human. One with Brian's face, on top of that.

He seemed to have passed out after throwing up, wedged between the wall and the toilet and the edge of an enormous sunken-in bathtub. Pressed against the cool marble floor, like some kid with a fever.

Since he was out, I reached out to touch him hesitantly, on his back, just behind one of the wing-joints. He didn't stir, so I picked him up, carried him out of the bathroom and over to his bed. Carrying him was awkward, because his wings just fell limp, dragging the ground, and I was afraid I'd step on them. Plus I was shaking the whole time, because I was scared. If he woke up… all he needed to do was take those claws to my throat, and I was a fuckin' goner for sure.

I got him to bed, though. He wasn't really that heavy. Then again, being locked up here, he probably hadn't eaten anything in a while.

Next I had to get the knife out of his shoulder. I knew he was going to wake up for that; there was no hope he wouldn't. I had promised Brian, though, at least in my mind, and that was the only thing that kept me going with all this madness.I grabbed hold of the knife with one hand and just yanked it out. Just because I wasn't letting him die didn't mean I was taking any special pains to make him comfortable.

He jerked awake, narrowing his eyes at me and snarling, then laid his head down again, twisting his neck I guess so he could breathe better, still heaving but now also watching me warily with those blank, hateful eyes. I glared hard at him back, and went to loosen the collar.

He got pissed again then, with me so close to his head, I guess, and started growling, thrashing about. Trying to undo the buckle with one hand and hold him down with the other wasn't working, so I reached out and gave a sharp smack across his ass. He squealed, startled, and immediately bit me in return, sinking teeth into my arm. Didn't matter, it kept him still at least. I got the collar off, shoved him off, and took off, yelling at him as I went.

"You goddamn ungrateful bitch!"

I threw the collar at him for good measure before slamming the door.


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

The next few days I was up there more often than not. Maxwell seemed determined to die, just to spite me. I was determined to make him live, to avenge Brian. And to spite him.

I started to wish I had kept the collar with me instead of throwing it. Because I then had to find some other way to keep Maxwell from killing me whenever I went up to make sure he wasn't dead, but I couldn't think of a damn thing. I shouldn't have thrown that collar. It had been my only bargaining chip.

In the end,when no other brilliant ideas came to mind,I had another one made, the same as the last, and went upstairs again, taking food (leftover pizza… I figured if he was hungry enough he would eat it; I wasn't spending any more money on him) and bandages with me.

Maxwell was lying on the couch, eyes half-closed, still heaving and rasping like he was barely able to breathe. Almost worse, in fact. And no wonder.

I could see a bruise around his neck the size and shape the collar had been. That wasn't the bad part, though. Where the garnets had touched his skin it was swollen, almost burnt-looking. Infected.

The gash in his shoulder, though, had disappeared entirely.

He looked up as I came towards him, growling softly and thrashing his tail around, but he doesn't get up, just went back to panting. I guessed he was too tired to try and fight me off.

I put the pizza down on the table in front of him. He twitched a wing, then rolled over and turned the row of spines along his back to me.

"Maxwell, stop being a bitch. You'd be dead by now if I hadn't come back."

No movement.

"Fine."

I left. Later on I would come back up to find the pizza I'd left was gone, but the Demon was lying the same way, breathing the same way, pretending not to notice me until I accidentally brushed up against him in going to retrieve the empty pizza box. Then I got bitten again.

It went on like that for weeks, with me, obviously not welcome but bringing the food and making sure the damn creature was still alive, and Maxwell either ignoring me completely or snarling and biting and slashing if I so much as touched him. I used more antiseptic shit in those two weeks than I had in the rest of my life put together.

Maxwell got better, though. So it was somewhat worth it. Maybe. The marks around his neck started to fade, and he could breathe again. He started sitting up and moving around rather than lying on the couch all day. He'd go to bed at night, have a bath during the day, whatever.

He got better but I felt like I had been gypped. Brian had taken himself from me and forced me to live with this inhuman mockery of him that did nothing but sneer at me. I felt more and more like I had become his slave, shittier and shittier. I became increasingly dependent on heroin again. I just had fix after fix to get me through.

It got me in trouble. One of the days, I had been high from morning to evening. As a result, I'd skipped two meals. Maxwell had missed three. Since he'd been a bitch at lunch the day before, I hadn't brought up dinner that night.

He was furious. I had made the mistake of creating a routine with him, which I later found out that Brian had never done. He'd kept him at bay with mind games, where I was being run all over.

He watched me with silent disgust, crouched on the back of the couch, as I came in with whatever I'd had to eat that night. His eyes followed me as I went and set it at the table like usual, but when I turned to leave, he lunged.

I heard the invisible sound of wings behind me as he jumped, then his claws raked down my back, sunk in, holding on there as he bit my shoulder. I panicked and bolted out, and he dropped back to the floor, snarling after me.

I slammed the door, but in my quick retreat, forgot to lock it…


	7. Chapter Seven

SHOUTOUTS:  
**Wiseupjanetweiss** - hallo my consistent reviewer! Ha… seems thing's gotten a bit odder… much funner to write, s'why I've been slapping up chapters faster than I can get reviews!Ahh but I appreciate it! Danke danke danke schon!

Chapter Seven

I had hurried down to the bathroom to inspect the damage his claws had done to my back, wincing as I pulled off my shredded shirt and threw it aside. Looking over my shoulder into the mirror, I saw eight deep, angry redgashes down my back, two punctures where Maxwell had hooked his thumbs into my skin to hold on, others where he'd bitten my shoulder. The whole thing was screaming "seek medical attention," but what was I going to tell them? Oh, the Demon living in my attic attacked me? Yeah. More likely they would pick up on the heroin in my system and think I had done it to myself. Crazy druggie guys tend to do things like that.

"Shit."

One thing was for sure, though. I had to get it cleaned out. God knew what kind of goddamned demon rabies or some shit Maxwell had. Hell, maybe he was even poisonous. Though if that had been the case, I was more than likely slowly dying already. Which was a happy thought.

I turned the faucets on in the tub, went to find a towel, and soaked it. Pressing a towel to your own back wasn't exactly all that effective at stopping bleeding, and it stung like hell, made me shake from the lances of pain, but it seemed to be about the realest, sanest thing I had done in days.

I let the water run. Worked my way out of my leather pants. Stepped into the bath, still laying back against the bloody towel, resting my head against the cool side of the tub.

A shadow slunk past the open bathroom door, but I hadn't noticed. My hands had been pressed over my eyes, and I was trying to return to some sort of calm state, trying to wish myself out of this madness my world had spiraled into.

"Oh God, Bri… Brian, Brian, Brian…"

Calling out to him, whispering his name, cursing him for chaining Maxwell to me, praying to him to save me, pitying him for what he'd been through. The shadow slipped by the door several more times.

Of course, the shadow had been Maxwell. He went by the door several more times unnoticed by me, searching the flat, going back and forth between the living area and the bedrooms. Eventually, he sat down in the doorway, waiting, surprisingly patient and quiet. I didn't even notice he was there until I started to get out of the bath and saw him sitting there, naked as always, legs bent almost daintily to one side, wings folded behind him. He looked up at me, tilting his head in a questioning, but also demanding manner.

**-Where is he?-**

The noise was inside my mind, like when your ears are ringing but there's not really any sound. That's how his voice was.

"What?"

**-Where's Brian?-** he repeats, impatient.

"You talk?"

He looked annoyed. **-Of course. Don't be stupid.-**

"Then why the hell didn't you before?"

**-Why would I speak to _you_? Frankly, you strike me as being fairly incompetent. Now where is Brian?-**

I scowled at him. "He's dead. He paid someone to shoot him. Right before a concert, where everyone was expecting him to pose as _you_."

**-Why?-**

"Why would I tell you?"

**-Because I told you to.-**

I got up and grabbed a towel, pulling it around myself, heading for the door, "Well, you don't deserve to know. You're a fuckin' bitch. Now move."

He bared his fangs but shifted aside. Barely.

"Bite me again and I'll put the collar on you."

He didn't care. I could threaten him all I liked, but he knew that at the moment, I had no weapons against him. Not even the collar. He got up from the floor, followed me down the hallway to the bedroom, sitting on the bed and watching me get dressed just like Brian had a thousand times. He was also sort of running claws carefully over the sheets, went up to bury his nose against the pillow. Brian's pillow. It pissed me off. Where did he get the right to come in and go through all Brian's things, be in here while I was trying to change?

Not that I was going to get dressed in front of him anyway.

"D'you mind?"

**-No.-**

Of course not. He was the one who appeared to have never let a single article of clothing grace his skin.

"Maxwell, get out."

He jerked his head up from what had been Brian's pillow.

**-Fuck you, Curt.-**

"That was Brian's privilege," I shot back.

**-Nice to see he stooped so low.-**

I turned to him, angry.

"You're glad to see him gone, aren't you, you little prick?"

His eyes narrowed again and he growled at me, starting to move forward, but I threw my towel at him, disgusted, and stormed out of the room. The insensitive little bastard. No wonder Brian had killed himself because of Maxwell…

I was going insane, and I'd barely spent a month with him.


	8. Chapter Eight

SHOUTOUTS:  
**Wiseupjanetweiss** - you're awesome! You deserve cookies! -hands over by the fistfuls- or maybe puppy chow? Sorry to hold out on you for this chapter… wanted to see if perhaps anyone else was going to wander over…

Chapter Eight

I went off to get clothes from the laundry room. Maxwell stayed in the bedroom. For the rest of the day. I could hear him going through the drawers, the closet, going through Brian's things. He wouldn't come out for dinner even though I had it delivered and called for him, trying to lure him out of my bedroom.

Finally, I got tired of waiting around and watching TV, and went in to yell at him. He was lying in Brian's spot in our bed, curled up with Brian's pillow, wrapped in Brian's sheets, blank eyes staring at the wall. I supposed this was his way of mourning, but I didn't care. I wanted him out. I didn't think he deserved to mourn; it was his fault Brian was dead in the first place.

"Maxwell. Get the hell out of my bed."

He glanced up at me and settled his head back against Brian's pillow. I suppose he knew it had been his because of the smell. It still smelled like Brian, something light and exotic and unidentifiable. I knew because I'd done the same thing before, curled up with his pillow, clinging to whatever little pieces of him there were left. But I hated to see Maxwell doing it. Nobody should have mourned Brian as much as I had.

"Maxwell. Now."

He didn't respond, so I went and pushed him off the bed. He scowled up at me and dragged Brian's pillow off the bed so he could curl up with it on the floor, but there was something about him speaking before that put me a bit too much at ease, made it easier to stand up to him. So that's when I started getting really pissed.

"Get the fuck outt've my bedroom, you fuckin' bitch! Get the hell outt've my life!"

He thrashed his tail about warningly but didn't move, and I, feeling more superior than I should have, went and found the collar in the living room, stormed back into the bedroom, and pulled it around his throat, cursing at him the whole time. He didn't fight me, though, until I jerked him up and started dragging him out by the collar. Then he started up gagging again, twisting around. He scratched up my legs pretty badly, bit whenever he could get close, but I wasn't in a mood to respond. I just jerked the collar so it was tighter and continued to drag-fight him up the stairs.

He got free, by opening up his wings suddenly and shoving me into the wall with them, forcing my hand off the collar. Then he fell limp and slid down a few stairs before hooking his claws into the wood, stopping himself, watching me warily and panting even though there was a good amount of space between his neck and the collar in most places.

"That's it. I'm going to fuckin' kill you!"

**-Then** **why don't you do it!**- he screamed back inside my head, furious and sounding horribly like Brian when he had been upset. He sat up, letting go of the stair, and started tearing furiously at the collar, wings fanned out, filling the narrow stairwell, perhaps to trap me, or maybe just for balance. His claws, though, kept slipping on the tiny metal pieces of the buckle, and he only grew more and more infuriated. I just sat back and watched his futile attempts.

"For a demon, you're pretty pathetic."

Wrong thing to say. Like I said, I'd started getting up on a high horse, and I sure as hell can't ride. Within an instant, I was knocked off my feet, dazed for a moment as my head had hit a step, then the pain of my cut-open back scraping down the edges of the hardwood steps as I fell down the rest brought me back a moment. I landed at the base of the stairs and blacked out a minute or two, waking up only to find Maxwell straddling me, claws pressed tightly to my throat and a sneer on his face. I suspected I was already bleeding. I feared I was two seconds from dead.

"Maxwell-" I gasped, but was cut off by sharper points of pain in my throat as he forced his claws further into my skin.

**-Shut** **up.**-

I did as I was told.

**-Take** **the collar off.**-

I reached up, noticed my hands were shaking, and undid the collar around his neck, avoiding the glare of his black eyes, with him warning me to never put it on again. I could already see the faint burn-marks from the garnet.

**-I want** **to kill you.**- he was whispering.-**I want to kill you so bad…**-

I wondered why he didn't.

**-You** **stole him from me.**- he accused.

"No. He killed himself because of _you_."

**-You're** **lying!-**

"Ha. I wish… told me so in a letter. He couldn't deal with you…"

He got off me with a sudden look of pain, and crouched there a moment, stunned. Then he made this tortured cry sort of sound, slashing and splintering the doorframe before collapsing against the bottom of the stairs, drawing his wings over him as he curled up into himself.

I left him there. He was too dangerous to touch, let alone help.


	9. Chapter Nine

AUTHOR'S NOTE: yeeah… I did hold off on posting this chapter a bit.. Tried to get some new people to come through! Hehe I think it worked… but apparently the link to Maxwell's picture STILL did not. So I've done the extreme. He's now my "Homepage" under my profile, for those curious…

SHOUTOUTS:  
**Wiseupjanetweiss** - -waves to loyal reviewer- sorry this update took so long… I held off a bit. Not to mention I was on vacation. Hehe but here it is! As always, danke schon!  
**Katatonia** - hallo my newcomer! Lol nice to see there's more people reading this than I think! So this is your dedicated chapter, darling… haha THANKS MUCH!

_Chapter Nine_

He was absolutely inconsolable. An artist creates beautiful things and puts nothing of himself into them, but Maxwell had put everything into Brian. Bri had cracked under the pressure and thrown it all back in the his face, and Maxwell was bitterly wounded by it. I had made the assumption that, as a demon, he would have attachments to nothing but himself. If anything. But I was proven wrong. I could not have out-mourned him if I tried.

He cried frequently but silently, not always tears, sometimes blood too. Once I swear it was glitter. Glitter tears for the god of glam. He didn't move, didn't eat, didn't drink, but it wasn't until after I saw his glossy black eyes go dull and his blue hair was matted and he had grown thin that I intervened again. I didn't want anything to do with him, not after his last round of attacks on me, but I refused to let him die.

**-You said you would kill me. Why don't you? I want to die…-** he told me once.

"Brian told me not to," I answered. "You don't deserve it anyway. You would die some triumphant creature in mourning, and I would be the lover who killed you out of spite. Now swallow."

Swallow because I had been spoon-feeding him. It was the only way to get him to eat. Don't make the mistake of thinking this was some delicate, refined act of generosity. This was me straddling the Demon so he couldn't squirm away, sometimes holding his head because I had to practically force the soup or whatever I had into his mouth. I think I said earlier how I was keeping him alive out of spite. It gave me some sort of twisted pleasure knowing he would have to spend another few hours in his tortured existence. At this point, I was at the stage where I was going for any sort of pleasure I cold get.

He became something of a hated pet, like Mandy's dumb parrot that was for some reason still in our flat. While he was still too lethargic to fight me, I carried him out of the stairwell to the living room couch. I would brush through his hair and the feather of his tail, making sure it was clean and glossy, not tangled. I found a nail file and filed down his claws, testing them against my own skin to make sure they were blunt enough that he could no longer cut me even if he did scratch. And I kept "force-feeding" him.

The Demon was either not used to or didn't like being handled. He would tense up, then get even stiffer as my hands moved over his hair or muscles. So it was pretty rewarding that I could annoy him with the slightest bit of effort. I got another collar, a third one, no garnet this time; it was just to piss him off, because once I'd put one on, he could never get it off, no matter how much he fought with it.

He got pretty hostile sometimes, and I would have to go out those days. It was practically the only reason I got out back then, after Brian died. Other times he didn't seem to care if I was around. I'd sit on the other couch and watch TV and shoot up and drink. He would watch sometimes, but he was like Brian. Didn't much like TV. Once I turned on music videos, though; he watched that. Once I got drunk enough to fall asleep on the same couch as him. I woke up in the morning with a fuckin' killer hangover and my hands tangled through his hair and on his shoulder and him yelling at me that I was disgusting and pathetic and filthy and worthless. But I was alive.

He made it clear he was not on friendly terms with me. Most of his time he spent sleeping, but when he was awake, he seemed to look for ways to piss me off. Other than the occasional bite, he would also ignore me, curse at me, whatever struck his fancy. And he wouldn't be in the same room with me, unless it was the living room. If I left there, he never followed. Actually, he never got off the damn couch.

Not that this bothered me much. At least I always knew where he was.


	10. Chapter Ten

SHOUTOUTS:  
**wiseupjanetweiss** - hehe, as always, top of my list! Hehe and here's the update… wrote it while I was "tanning" (AKA burning) at the lake  
**Miss Loaf** - hey there! Hehe thanks for checking this out! I always love to see new people coming by- and I love my Dorian Gray book.. Hehe mine looks rather like the one I described Brian as having… that and my copy of Wilde's other stuff. Have you read any of it?  
**Alexandria Queen of Dreams** - hallo! Lol you should be afraid of the ending… I'm very very afraid… I've several options, dunno which to choose! And I gotta say… I think I've read all of your VG stories… luff 'em! But I'm fairly bad about reviewing -blushes-

_Chapter Ten_

It was sort of reassuring that he never got off that damn couch. So I eventually figured out (you think it would have taken me a lot less time, but I was pretty blitzed around then, you gotta remember) that I didn't have to watch him all the time to make sure he wasn't after me. I could go off and do my own thing. Which was quite helpful, considering I wanted to stay away from Maxwell as much as possible.

So I started going out again. A little. I saw Jack Fairy quite often. He would always ask me (while smoking a cigarette, re-applying rouge or eyeliner, messing with his clothes or mine, never just staying still and looking at me and asking me, like Brian would have) how I was "getting along" without Brian, what I was doing, what was new, that sort of thing. Very concerned-like, but I knew better. I always knew Jack Fairy had ulterior motives when he was dealing with me or anyone else who happened to be a little more famous than him. Or at least, that's what it felt like. But he supplied me with a good amount of heroin or methadone or whatever I wanted so I didn't much care. Let him ask his nosy questions and flaunt me about like we were actually an item, like he was actually with the late Brian Slade's lover. The tabloids seemed to think so anyway. There were tons of them saying what an insensitive prick I was for "bouncing back" so fast, but I was too doped up most of the time to argue. If only they would have known what was really going on. But I never gave them the chance.

Jack Fairy did one thing, though. He kept nagging and bitching and poking at me until I promised him I would start playing music again. So I did. Or tried to. I tried messing around and making up some new stuff to finish out my album, get out my feelings about Brian and all that crap, but it was all some grand bunch of shit. Nothing I wrote about him was worth recording. Nothing was worthy of Brian Slade. Which the drugs I'm sure didn't help much, but it made me feel like shit, because Brian sure as hell would have recorded something if I had died. And it would have been the best damn song ever, an instant number one hit.

Maxwell enjoyed my ineffective messing around immensely. As in it actually got him to get up off the couch to come see what I was doing. We'll just say I was startled a bit more than a little the first time I was playing and looked up to find him in the door. If I hadn't had the strap on my guitar, I'm pretty sure I would've dropped the thing and smashed it, 'cause I know I let go of it. He just smirked in amusement at my alarm and sat down in the doorway to let me know he wasn't leaving anytime soon.

But he had one of the collars on and it sort of reminded me I couldn't act like I was afraid of him then, just because he'd decided to get off his lazy ass. So I picked up my guitar and started playing again, glaring hard at him the whole time. He just shut his eyes and laid down again, right across the doorway. I stopped playing.

"Do you do anything besides sleep?"

He opened an eye.

**-Do you always miss the middle note of your chords?-**

That pissed me off. So I made a motion at my headphones like I couldn't hear him.

**-Don't act like you can't hear me, you twat. Firstly, I don't speak aloud, so your headphones have nothing to do if you can hear me. Second, I haven't moved my mouth, so unless you _have_ heard me, you would have no idea I'd spoken.-**

"Bitch."

**-How much heroin have you had today? You shouldn't play like this; you're simply dreadful to listen to.-**

"What the fuck business is it of yours!" I spat back.

He just shrugged. Later on he would tell me he was "of the opinion I was incapable of making any good noise," the way I'd either shouted at him or rambled drunkenly or had the TV on or tried to play music while I was shitfaced. And as good as he could apparently hear, I'm sure it drove him fuckin' insane.

So in a way, I sort of didn't blame him. I kind of had been going around acting like an asshole, but then again, so had he. And anyway, Brian had just died, and Maxwell was in my house, so was I supposed to act like everything was all right?

'Cause it wasn't.


	11. Chapter Eleven

SHOUTOUTS: (oh wow! There are many! I'm feeling soooo awesome right now! Thanks to EVERYONE for making this my most popular story yet!)  
**wiseupjanetweiss** - and thanks to you for being such a loyal, awesome reader! You need a Special Merit for reviewing! -steals one from piano teacher's house-  
**Alexandria Queen of Dreams - **oooh lovely. I was confused for the longest time on what website I was supposed to search at. But I got it. Hehe. Thanks. I will try my very absolute hardest not to leave this one unfinished, just for you. (no, for everyone, lol. But you mentioned it specifically)  
**Katatonia - **hehe. No. I don't think they would be… Maxwell's a lovely sort of bitch. That why I named my car after him… lol  
**Miss Loaf - **oooh great! That's wonderful that the link to the artwork works! Thanks much! I had fun drawing that! (there's a couple others, but they are a tad less… proportionally correct)  
**JulezB - **hehe… no LSD… just my brain on overtime. I was missing the movie quite badly at this point because I didn't actually get it until recently.  
**Roxy Eno - **really? You think I got Curt's character? 'cause that has got to be my biggest hesitation in this story… thanks for the reassurance!  
**Valo - **awww! Thanks! Love to hear I've got people hooked! Hehe. It's one thing to get reviews, but wow! Favorites, such a confidence booster!  
**jsumptersgurl - **lol… yeah. I never could deal with their version of Maxwell Demon. Yeah, he did the whole rape-the-dolls thing but other than that I found it odd how he went about all prancing and glittery. Brian was more of Maxwell than Maxwell was Maxwell… hehe so I think I've just let out a bit of my inspiration…

_Chapter Eleven_

The next week was my birthday. I had completely forgotten, but of course Jack and Trevor and whoever else wouldn't let it go. So they surprised me.

I opened the door to the flat with this huge box full of liquor in one arm, shoving the door open with the other, expecting no greeting at all. Maxwell usually didn't care to acknowledge that Ihad comehome. Instead, I got this huge "SURPRISE!" and I dropped the box, shattering a couple of the bottles, and near about shit myself. Of course a bunch of people laughed.

"Look!"

"He's bought to booze for his own party!"

"Who told him about it? Who did it?"

Jack had come floating over beside me, a glass of champagne in one hand, smiling faintly as I leaned in closer to him.

"Jack… what the hell's going on? Who let everyone in here?"

"I did." He put the champagne into my hand. "It's your birthday, of course. Or are you trying to forget that, too?"

"Sort of." I mumbled back and drained the glass, handed it back to him, and put on that big press grin, and went out to welcome and thank everyone for going through all the trouble, yadda yadda yadda. Just like I was expected to.

The next few hours was I guess what you would call a pretty rockin' party. Booze, food, music, dancing, drugs, you name it. I got some pretty cool presents from people, although I couldn't take the time to open them all right then, and I don't really even remember what they were, except that they were cool.

I started off the night pretty uncomfortable. Mostly because I hadn't seen these people in weeks, and suddenly they were all celebrating me. Also, I was wondering what happened to Maxwell. We were bound to get caught with so many people over, wandering around all parts of the flat. I started to relax, though, as the night wore on and I drank more and more and nobody had turned up screaming and bloody yet. I figured he must have hid himself pretty good. But I never really got the chance to check.

People kept me on their arms all night, walking around with me, asking how I was, how things were, what I was doing. The stuff I'd already told you Jack had asked when he started dragging me out. I mostly lied and said I was getting better, I had some good new songs I could record soon, stuff like that. It's easy to lie when you don't know people half as well as they claim to know you.

The party was like this weird mix of a rave and a traditional at home birthday party. If I can remember back to any of those. There was drinking and loud music, but they stopped it all to bring out a cake. Two cakes, actually, 'cause there were so many people. And they sang "Happy Birthday" and all that weird crap. I forgot to ask how old I was turning. I didn't forget to make a wish.

I wished I could have Brian back.

**-+-**

After a while, things just got really weird. People kept showing up, and I knew less and less of them. I think what happened is that my neighbors caught wind of the party (gee, I'll never guess how that happened) and started inviting themselves and their friends in, and nobody knew any better than to monitor the door. And like I said, the party was already strange enough. I swear, I'm pretty sure someone showed up with a piñata.

I was wandering around among all these people, not quite as drunk anymore with an empty cake-plate in hand. It wasn't really that fun anymore; I wanted people to leave. I wasn't really up to this much of a party, especially since I obviously hadn't even remembered there was anything to celebrate. Plus, I knew the flat was going to be wrecked in the morning.

So I excused myself. Claimed I was going to take a piss, but I slipped off to that attic stairway, desperately hoping no one was going to follow me. I had the presence of mind to bring a peace offering with me, some of the cake and a bottle of wine that somehow hadn't been opened yet. Making sure the first door was locked behind me before I went upstairs, I unlocked Maxwell's door and let myself in.

I was instantly met with a snarl, but he shut up pretty quick when he realized it was only me.

"None of them saw you, did they?"

He shook his head, relaxing back on the couch again. He must have heard them coming and locked himself up here.

"Good. I brought you some cake."

**-Why are you up here?-**

I set the cake and wine down and took up a chair, mindful to keep my distance from him.

"'cause I don't wanna be down there."

**-Party too much for you?-** he mocks.

I shrugged and he went to investigate the cake before I guess determining I hadn't poisoned it and starting to eat. I hated to watch him; he ate all dainty like Brian had. So I dropped my eyes.

"I'm sleeping up here."

**-Not in my bed.-**

Should have guessed. I just rolled my eyes at him and curled up in the chair. Whatever. As long as I didn't have twenty thousand people trying to get me up to party some more. Or have sex with them. Hell, there were probably people in my bed having sex.

Maxwell was almost desirable company compared to that.


	12. Chapter Twelve

SHOUTOUTS:  
**Valo - **hehe… "dainty?" it's really funny how the words and things I hesitate most on are the ones that people seem to be crazy about. lol  
**Katatonia - **woo! Sounds like you are a jack hat- -shifty eyes- _not-liker_ as well! Are you? I find him somewhat creepy… sort of like Arthur. Whoops. Didn't say that either. -goes off in a whir of political correctness-  
**JulezB - **I have the funniest story about my VG dvd… I got paid to buy it. Lol 'cause the damn people can't count change! I even told them they gave me too much. They did nothing, so what was I to do? -walks off a dollar richer-  
**Alexandria Queen of Dreams - **-running on inspiration treadmill- funny how easy it is to think waiting for your classes at the horse shows… that's where this one came from  
**jsumptersgurl - **lol they gripe at each other so much. It's so fun to write. Glad everyone's enjoying their little spat-iness!  
**wiseupjanetweiss** - ooo fun fun! I can steal more things for you if you like… like a copy of this book. I might actually be putting it out as a book… but I'm afraid of the legal ramifications  
**Roxy Eno - **hehe thanks for the artwork praise… I'm afraid I can't get facial features exactly right… but it's a miracle it underwent colouring and still got approved by me. I'm always afraid of that step…

Chapter Twelve

He was restless. I hadn't realized because of not sleeping in the same room as him how much he thrashed about. Usually I sleep like I'm dead, but I couldn't with him just across the tiny upstairs flat.

I guess he went to sleep sometime after I did, because I don't remember him ever getting up or the lights going out or the radio going off. I vaguely remember the water running sometime, but it's fuzzy. When he woke me up, though, everything gets slightly sharper.

I remember being woken up by something, I thought maybe a dream or some noise or that kind of feeling you get sometimes. After all, you can't rest easy in a Demon's territory. Of course, I looked around for him straight off. In the dim, vague way you see in the dark I could see one of his wings fanned out over the low wall. Stretched out, then contracting, twitching really, then all of a sudden he pulled it in towards him really jerkily and I heard his tail whip through the air fast enough that it make a cracking noise. Heard a low, pained moan and him turning over.

I remember thinking, this is it, he's finally just going to snuff it without my help or hindrance at all. Just die in his sleep. All that work with stabbing and garnets and trying to nurse him back and all that nonsense was just going to come to this.

I heard him twist around in the sheets again and I got up, stiff all over from sleeping curled up in the chair. I remember my stiffness more clearly than I can remember exactly what he was doing right then. At some point I turned a light on, saw it glint off the spines along his back.

I came closer.

"Maxwell…"

Testing to see if he could hear me, respond. If he was coherent or if this really was going to be the end. His wings fluttered and he turned my way a moment, but it was only part of another fit of thrashing, and he cried out this time.

Afraid there might still be someone around to hear, I leapt forward and covered his mouth to stifle the noise. That was when I really woke up and things begin to get a lot easier to recall. That's when I first felt how hot he was, beyond feverish, how sweat darkened his hair to a solid, Crayola-crayon blue like Brian's after a concert. That's when I first noticed the blood.

Long gashes along his arms, over his chest, across one hip. Three and sometimes four stripes all neatly lined up. Like the ones down my back. Slashes from his own claws. Not only had he been tearing about in the bed, he'd been tearing at himself, hard enough to rip himself up with claws still half-blunt from my filing.

His eyes shot open when I touched him, and I flinched back, prepared to be cut apart. Maxwell just laid back, gone limp, closed his eyes again, panting.

"What the hell was that? What happened?"

No answer. Breathe in, breathe out, shaky breaths quickly being forced under control.

"Was that fuckin' _dreaming?_"

No answer, but he opened his eyes. I quieted down, softened my tone.

"What about?"

And he spoke the first word to me not tainted in sarcasm or anger or jealousy I'd heard.

**-Punishment.-**

Punishment? I didn't want to know. Hopefully it was for Brian. Had to be. I hoped, then felt a tinge of regret that I had, that whoever he was answering to gave it to him a lot worse than I had.

But I didn't mention this. Instead I said, "You've hurt yourself."

He looked at me blankly a moment, then sat up. He took a moment to inspect the damage he'd done, then went to lift a blood-streaked forearm to his mouth. I saw his long tongue snake out and I commented,

"Fuck. You're not gonna get it clean that way."

Before I noticed he was wincing slightly again and I heard a faint sizzle as his tongue swiped over the wound. It burned, but when he was through there wasn't a single trace of the cuts anywhere along his arm. Like he'd simply erased them.

He continues on this way and I remember something from earlier.

"You did that where I stabbed you."

**-You think I would have left it to become infected?-**

"I didn't know what the hell to expect from you. I still don't."

He shrugs, then suddenly leans over and did that same licking-thing to a cut on my arm I'd gotten from dropping my box of booze.

It stung like hell, and I tore away from him, shocked, putting the low sectioning wall between myself and Maxwell as he smirked at me.

It was burning, and I was offended as I slunk back off to the couch. Offended, and pissed and startled…

…and oddly liberated.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

SHOUTOUTS: (thanks to EVERYONE again! Because I now hold the review record on this site for Velvet Goldmine fan fiction! 43!)  
**wiseupjanetweiss - **I really am considering putting it into a book… everyone on here is so encouraging. But it's a lot of work and legal stuff, permissions for the characters from Miramax and such… I'm not really sure what all else  
**Alexandria Queen of Dreams - **lol. Thanks for the use of your muses… although I'm afraid they may return home a little worse for the wear… -Maxwell glowers-  
**Miss Loaf - **hehe. I don't like Jack either. But it seems to me he'd get closer to Curt afterwards than a lot of people would…  
**Valo - **ha. Well… this chapter sure isn't a love scene, I'll give away that much…  
**Katatonia - **yes. I love Christian Bale, he's actually why I watched VG in the first… but Arthur is sooo… -shivers-  
**Brownie/Melody** - lol you see where my conversations with people are going? Look, they notice he's creepy as well. But you knew about Maxwell long before they did. Haha. And you've seen the shite pictures, dearest. Maybe I'll draw the one you suggested sometime. But that would mean I would have to expand the link into an actual webpage. And we all hate that. Wait… where am I supposed to tell you this is not going where you think it's going?

Chapter Thirteen

I'm not sure if he ended up going back to sleep or not, but I did. Had some of the wine Maxwell had left and then stretched out on the couch so I wouldn't be stiff in the morning and went straight off.

When I woke up, his bathroom door was shut, so I went downstairs to make coffee and see if anyone was still hanging around. And they weren't. It was somehow late afternoon already and the flat was empty. Perhaps they'd taken the hint from my not being there the past twelve hours that I didn't want people around. And my apartment wasn't as trashed as I would have guessed. I wondered who I owed that to.

I cut off a piece of cake after putting the coffee-maker on and went wandering around while I ate it. Maxwell eventually slunk down from upstairs. I could never understand how he could keep his balance going down the stairs like that, on all fours. If I tried to do it or anyone else did, they would have ended up on their head, but he did it just as graceful as you please.

He did the same as me for a while, just wandered around aimlessly, eventually getting up to walk normally rather than his slinking crawl near the floor. I watched him from a chair in the kitchen. He came around to the parrot's cage and laced his claws into the bars, sizing up the parrot while the Macaw watched him warily. I suspected it had been sufficiently pestered the night before by all the drunken and high people cavorting around the flat and was expecting more.

**-Whose bird is this?-**

"Mandy's."

He growled softly at the name. I had been right, Brian's ignoring her toward the end had stemmed from Maxwell's distaste for the woman.**-Why is it here?-**

"She won't take the fuckin' thing home."

**-You don't like it, then?-**

"No. It bites and wakes up too damn early."

He nodded and released the bars, shifting over to the front of the cage. I wondered why he was so interested in the damn bird. Before I had the chance to question him, though, he had opened the cage and scooped it up, having it sit on one hand while he stroked the back of his claws over its feathers.

"Maxwell, what are you doing?"

He started purring at the bird, an actual cat-tiger kind of purr, not the sort of imitation you'd hear from a person.

**-Nothing.-**

But he suddenly got this vicious little nasty grin that showed his fangs and told me otherwise. And it dawned on me.

"You're going to eat it, aren't you?"

His eyes shifted up towards me and I knew the answer.

"Gross."

I got up and went over away from him, to start looking through the presents I hadn't gotten around to the night before. I wasn't going to watch this. Halfway through unwrapping the first item, though, I heard a crunch and the parrot squawk and fall to the ground. I couldn't help but glance up.

Maxwell was sitting on the floor, watching languidly as the bird, one wing mangled and broken, tried desperately to escape from where Maxwell had the claws on his toes pinning its tail feathers to the floor. Even as I looked, he let the parrot go and it hopped away a few feet, trailing blood before he pinned it again.

The next time he repeated this stunt he pulled out feathers, and the time after that he simply bit down on the Macaw's uninjured wing and tore it clean off while the bird screamed horribly. My stomach lurched.

"Maxwell!"

He looked over at me, dropped the wing from his mouth and started purring at me, pleased with himself and with me for letting him do it, blood turning his lips red like some macrabre lipstick. I struggled to keep my voice under control.

"Kill it now. You've… you've had your fuckin' fun, now kill it."

Put the damn thing out of its misery. And he did, by merely backhanding it, breaking its neck, before looking up at me sulkily and licking the blood off his lips.

I stood up shakily, as soon as I knew I could keep myself under control at least in front of him, then went to the bathroom and threw up all of the booze and cake from the night before.

**-+-**

When I cameback outhe was lying across the couch, picking through a bowl of fruit and reading the newspaper. The bird was gone, every little trace of it. Like nothing had ever happened.

I sat down on the other couch and he got up and came over all purring at me and I think I was in shock because I let him curl up in my lap and go to sleep. I knew he knew it freaked me out near as much as the parrot incident. I just turned on the TV and tried to forget what I'd just seen, ignoring the feeling of the spines along his back digging into my side…


	14. Chapter Fourteen

AUTHOR'S NOTE: back from Chicago with two new chapters! Also a new Velvet Goldmine website, -+Velvet+SHEBANG+- which replaced the Maxwell Demon picture as my homepage link off my profile. I'd love for you to come look at it, and if you've got a site, I'd love even more to be affiliates with you! -

SHOUTOUTS:  
**wiseupjanetweiss - **oo yes. I was looking into the publishing on before I left for Chicago… I think they books would end up being around $7.25... Depending on what page size I used. But trying to get ahold of people to do copyright releases is so insanely hard.  
**Katatonia - **well.. No. he didn't. but he's not entirely soulless either! It's sort of like the throwing up in the toilet thing. Semi. A bit.  
**Miss Loaf - **hehe. Nope. Not wrong at all! Although I'm sure some people would disagree with me. Hmm… maybe I'll add Maxwell as a choice on one of my Velvet Shebang polls…  
**Alexandria Queen of Dreams - **we saw ten trillion dead stuffed parrots at the Field Museum in Chicago. I was very very tempted to smirk and laugh. But since Emob was with me and she hasn't read this far into the story yet… I only smirked and hinted around.  
**Roxy Eno** - I've missed you the past couple chapters! Glad you've come back! And glad to have support for the book… although god knows who or where I'm supposed to contact about it!  
**Valo - **lol. Glad I didn't disappoint you. It was an odd chapter to write… then again, this whole thing is, pretty much. -

Chapter Fourteen

Some time after that, I made a startling discovery: Maxwell had been writing Brian's songs.

I had been going through all his lyrics and everything in our little home studio, trying to find some sort of inspiration. Because I was really just stuck. Again. Hadn't come up with anything in months. Looking through all the pages and little notes and scraps of napkin or whatever (Brian had saved everything), I felt there was something odd about them. But I didn't really realize what it was until I was looking at a few of the songs side by side.

The handwriting was different. I could see some of them marked with my hasty block print here and there, other with an elegant looping scrawl that matched the note Brian had left in his Picture of Dorian Gray book. Then there was a third set.

This writing was cursive as well, but scratchier, infinitely messier than the other that I knew was Brian's. I had noticed this once before, I think, but dismissed it was Brian's being in a hurry and promptly forgotten all about what I'd seen. But now I knew better. It had been Maxwell's writing all along.

That in itself wasn't what really surprised me; I had suspected it ever since I found out he wasn't just some character in Brian's imagination. It was the extent to which it had happened which alarmed me. Looking through the notes, I saw Maxwell had authored nearly half of the "Ballad of Maxwell Demon" album. Nearly all of "Lipstick Traces." Although hit songs were fairly evenly split between the two, album space definitely wasn't.

For a while, I was wounded by this. It was fraud; Brian had been lying to everyone. He had been lying to me.

But then, he had always been, hadn't he? He said he was going to be my main man. In the end, it was always me helping him out, trying to keep him happy, trying to keep him on his feet. He had lied about being Maxwell Demon. He hadn't told me about his suicide. I don't think he could help it. Lies and charm had always gotten him everything he wanted before; I guess he figured people didn't care.

But I did.

When I confronted Maxwell about it, he was insolent as usual.

**-So? I wrote the songs. Someone had to.-**

"Brian was supposed to."

He shrugged. **-He was always busy.-**

I had to admit that was true, but not out loud.

**-I don't know why you're so upset about it anyway. It's not your problem. It's Bijou's.- **

"He lied to me."

Maxwell gave me this grim, almost sympathetic little smile.

**-And you're just starting to realise this, aren't you?-**

And I was.

"Why? Why wouldn't he just say something?"

**-I'm a demon, not a mind-reader. And this isn't one of those girly movies where everyone talks about their feelings. I can't tell you.-**

I glared at him.

**-Go record something, Curt,-** he ordered me.

And I did. A scornful song about how love is deceitful and unsympathetic. It felt horrible to regard Brian in that way, to let that be my memory of him put into words… but it was true.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

Maxwell and I got closer. That's how I'm gonna say it, because that's how it happened. There was no big revelation, no spark or any of that shit. We were both shipwrecked and alone, so we drifted together. It's how things happen, you know. Human nature.

I didn't even realize it when it happened. Just that Maxwell spent more and more time downstairs and around me, and he wasn't quite so nasty to me anymore, and I wasn't quite so nasty back, and then the next thing I knew he was sleeping in the same bed with me.

It didn't happen right away. He was the one who too haughty for that; it was me who had ended up asking. I tried to keep him away for a long time, then it just got impossible to act like I wanted him gone. He wasn't going to make it easy, though.

When I told him he didn't have to stay upstairs, he smirked at me knowingly and went up anyways. When the next day I flat out offered my bed to him, he refused, and went right on upstairs.

This went on for a week or more before I finally just caught him 'round the waist before he could get all the way up to the attic flat.

"Maxwell… come to bed," I whispered.

And that time he did. He followed me down, and we went to sleep and that was all. That was all I wanted, and Maxwell was always sure to make it be me who wanted something from him and not the other way around, so he made no advances from there. But I didn't care. We didn't have sex, a lot of the time didn't even touch. Sometimes slept at different times, and then there would only be one of us. But I didn't care. The important thing was that it had stopped being _my_ bed and started being _our_ bed again.

There was other stuff, too. Like his curling up to sleep in my lap after killing the bird was the first time of many. I would always call him into the little studio and he would sit and watch and listen. Once he played guitar and sang. Used an "out loud voice," though it was about the only time I ever heard him that way.

He sounded just as eerily like Brian as he looked like him, playing like that, with the same facial expression and everything. The same fluidly graceful way of moving. I wasn't sure whether I liked it or not, but it was impressive at least.

If I got bored, I would catch him and play around with his wings and stuff, and he would tolerate me while I pulled one open and messed with them and tried to figure out how it would _work_, for him to fly. Except once I accidentally pinched a nerve or something, and he turned around and bit my hand. I didn't say he had turned into an angel. But it was okay; he took it back. He would always take things back, unless I really deserved it. And sometimes I did, but mostly he would fix things, erase those wounds, and do a pretty damn good job of it.

Some things, though, he couldn't fix.

One time I remember real clearly, he had brought me a brush when he came to curl up on my lap. He was doing that purring thing while I brushed his hair, and kept it up when I moved on to his tail, so I was focusing more on his purring than what he was actually doing.

I thought he was just going to lie still like he usually did in my lap, but I felt this burning on my arm and I stopped brushing to see what he was doing.

He had been licking my arm, but when I stopped, so did he, looking up at me guiltily like he thought perhaps I wouldn't have noticed.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

**-Nothing,-** he answered.

So I caught his tail again and went back to brushing it, and he laid his head down and went back to purring. Then five minutes later, he started licking at my arm again, harder this time, and I stopped to look and found he was trying to erase the track marks there from the heroin. But no matter how hard he went on licking, they wouldn't go away, just showed up stark as ever.

I let him go on and lick at it until my arm was nearly raw and it felt like the burning sensation that was supposed to heal was eating into my bone. Then I called him off.

"Maxwell, c'mon, cut it out. You've licked me so that I'm practically bleeding."

**-It won't go away.-**

I shrugged, pulling my arm away from him.

**-Why not?-**

"'cause I don't want it to go away."


	16. Chapter Sixteen

AUTHOR'S NOTE: sorry this one took so long. I kinda wasn't feeling it, but here it is. Hopefully to move onto better chapters.

SHOUTOUTS:  
**Roxy Eno - **hehe… yeah, I'm a big fan of Brian/Curt as well… because, well. They work, you know? I don't know why I haven't written any fanfics about them yet…  
**wiseupjanetweiss - **ahh! Bad me, not updating for so long! Hope you like, though… ('cause I don't -grumbles-)  
**Brownie/Melody - **what? What? Going somewhere? I swear, it's not… thanks for Oscar, tho! Haha he's wonderful.  
**Alexandria Queen of Dreams - **glad you liked it… it's kinda funny to make them fluffy, I always thought of Curt as being a bit more hardcore, but… hmm. Dunno where I'm going with that. lol  
**Valo** - turns? Turns? It's about to take a turn alright, as soon as I decide if I want a certain bit in my ending or not…  
**What Lurks in Shadows - **wow! Thanks! Lol and I know what you mean about reviewing… I'm a bad, inconsistent reviewer… but that was an amazing one! I feel luffed!  
**Miss Loaf** - glad to brighten up your study leave! Did you end up telling your sister what the 'aw'-ing was about? hehe  
**SiriusBlackfan5405** - yay! I'm a favorite! -purrs- sorry again I didn't update soon like you would've liked, but I didn't abandon my darlings!

Chapter Sixteen

It became his pet peeve. The heroin, that is. About a day later I came home from the Bijou studios wanting a fix only to find Maxwell had hidden it all (destroyed, actually, I would find out still later) then went and hid himself in the upstairs flat. He expected me to be mad, and I didn't let him down any. I was furious.

I stormed upstairs after tearing the flat apart looking for my stash, already yelling bloody murder at him, and threw open the door. He was sitting on a chair, reading, but I saw him flinch as I came in, the way his tail got all stiff at the end.

"What the HELL do you think you've done!"

**-Nothing to merit your shouting at me,-** he answered cheekily, without looking up, and I stormed over and tried to snatch the book away so he would pay attention. He dug his claws into the leather cover, shredding it as I slowly yanked the thing out of his grip. With another harder tug I managed to jerk it out of his hands and he finally glared up at me.

"Where is it?"

**-Nowhere _you'll_ be able to find it!-** he shouted back, so tense I could see the end of his tail curling now, and I thought, was it possible I was scaring him?

Then I looked back at his mean little narrowed black slit eyes and realized that he wasn't. Not at all. He was just angry, in a different way than I had ever seen him angry before.

"Why'd you take it?"

**-Why do you care?-**

"It was _mine_, Maxwell; go get it back!"

**-You don't need it.-**

"Yes, I do! Go get it! NOW!"

**-No!-**

I growled at him. "Then I'll just go buy more!" I yelled as I started for the door.

**-No!-**

He moved to block me. I snarled at him and he gave a real snarl back, the nasty in-his-throat tiger-like kind.

"Let me out! You can't just keep me here, you fuckin' freak!"

Maxwell only crouched down in front of the door, his wings fanned out and claws ready, should I try to get past him.

"You're such a bitch!" I screamed. He didn't budge, so I turned to storm off in the other direction.

**-Where the hell're you going!-**

"Fuck off! I gotta take a piss!"

In reality, I was just mad at him, but I went into the bathroom anyway to try and calm down a bit so I could think about where he would have hidden my stash. I was getting kind of shaky and sick feeling, which was sad, because it had barely been 24 hours since I'd had a fix. So I sat down on the toilet and hoped the craving or withdrawal or whatever it was would pass.

A half hour later, I was still there, only on the floor now and feeling way shittier, like I might pass out. Maxwell figured out eventually I wasn't just in there to piss, and he worked open the lock with a claw to come in and stare at the mess he'd created.

"Get away, you fuckin' bastard!"

I yelled at him, throwing the nearest thing I could grab: a roll of toilet paper. Needless to say, the Demon was unfazed and only slunk inside the door after he ducked and closer to me. I glared at him and threw the Kleenex box as well, but I missed. He crept forward until he was pressed up against my side. I shoved him away and he came back and nuzzled my shoulder. I slapped him and he started purring. I smacked and punched and screamed and yelled and hit, but he only sat there and endured it. Looking back, I feel bad for him, 'cause he was only trying to help my sorry ass. At the time, though, I just wanted to beat him up and make him as miserable as possible for taking my drugs.

Eventually, he left me alone, went off to go tend to his wounds. And the rest of the next day he hid from me. I don't know how he managed to keep out of sight, but I couldn't find him again until dinnertime. After dinner, in fact. I saw him slinking towards the stairs past my bathroom when I was brushing my teeth, and I spat out a whole bunch of toothpaste so that I could go after him.

"Maxwell."

He turned to look at me, warily.

"Don't do it again."

He gave me this really bitchy look and turned to leave again, but I caught his tail gently and he turned to look back again.

"Now come to bed…"


	17. Chapter Seventeen

AUTHOR'S NOTE: hey all. I'm back from being an asshole and not updating. School, y'know… or maybe I'm just using that as an excuse. But hang in ther, I'm intending on finishing this story. Sorry about the shitty shoutouts as well, 'tis been a long day, and I couldn't stand waiting any longer to get the new chapter up. And it's short, still, but it's here.

SHOUTOUTS:  
**jsumptersgurl -** ha. Well-ish. I'm not quite sure Maxwell takes anything well… so -ish is appropriate.**  
Alexandria Queen of Dreams -** aww damn! Stop snuggling him! I want to!  
**Miss Loaf -** cough well… ya get what ya get. ;D mmm MSN? Nope… I got AIM, tho (InABadMoodAllDay) and YIM (velvetshebang)  
**wiseupjanetweiss -** I can't wait to get into trouble! Hehehe… well… I updated, finally. Sorry again it took so long  
**Roxy Eno -** hmm well put. Lol I love how everyone knows my characters better'n I do  
**SiriusBlackfan5405 -** ta! Thanks! Hope you like the new one!  
**Brownie/Melody -** do I even have to talk to you? We've already gone over this… lol  
**Katatonia -** YOU'RE FREAKIN' FANTASTIC! Hehe couldn't resist…  
**Valo -** -luff- thanks for hanging in with us…  
**What Lurks In Shadows - **damn. I guess there's gonna be trouble. Feel free to beat me, although I've already done it myself…

Chapter Seventeen

He went and curled up beneath the sheets, and I laid down beside him, and he didn't tense when I pulled him close to try and calm him down, show him I wasn't angry anymore. I stroked along his back, just next to the sharp spines down the middle and he purred softly, letting me although he didn't really move otherwise.

But I was curious about what that purr felt like, so without thinking I leaned in and kissed him, as I might have done to Brian, had he purred. And Maxwell paused to consider a moment, kissed back, and stopped purring. So I laughed.

**-What?-** he asked, pulling away and of course, looking insulted. But it was still funny.

"Nothing. You just stopped purring."

**-Why's that funny?-**

"'cause that's why I kissed you in the first place."

He looked at me strangely but started purring again, a really obvious kind of encouragement. So I kissed him again and this time he kept purring and it created this really nice vibration just like I'd expected it to, so I pulled him in closer and he wrapped a wing around me to stay there. Which was a bit freaky, let me tell you. You sometimes forget things like that, how powerful he was, even with just a flimsy-looking wing. But it didn't take too long to get used to, basically because I was distracted from it pretty damn quick.

Surprisingly, he hadn't done this before, not with Brian, or anyone as far as I knew. But he had an unusual talent for it, catching on alarmingly easily to what turned me on and how quickly and the best way to do it and when to use it. Things that had taken me years to feel like I really had figured out. And instead of being afraid or shy of any advances I made, he welcomed them quite readily, eager to learn.

And he didn't need to be told verbally what he was learning; it just seemed to hit him all of a sudden and his new knowledge would kick in not a moment later. It was mind-blowing, to say the least, being with him when there was that little uncertain pause, then the next moment you can hardly breathe.

Before I get too far into this, I might want to mention the whole thing with the claws and spines, since I'm sure somebody's bound to get all hung up on that. Well if you people would remember anything right, I'd already filed his claws down so that wasn't a problem. They grew out again, but he let me keep them reasonably blunted. As far as the spikes along his back go, that's a mechanics thing. You can just picture it yourself. Really, I'm not sure why I should have had to spell all this out in the first place; all I was trying to say was that it wasn't a big deal and you shouldn't be so damn worried about it.

The point is, he was amazing in bed. I'll be blunt about that. But he wasn't Brian. I never tried to pretend he was; don't accuse me of it. When it got down to it, he was better than Brian, but that's because he wasn't human. I'd come to forget that at times, but in the end, he wasn't. He was as close as you got, but you can never really replace a real living human person.

That had its advantages and disadvantages. For one, in the morning, I could almost always count on Maxwell to be right there where he had been in the bed beside me the night before. He had nowhere else to be. Brian I expected to hop from bed to bed and partner to partner as he saw fit and think nothing of it. We both did, really, before he died.

But with Brian, I could look into his eyes and be absolutely sure that despite all that, somewhere inside he did love me.

I could only hope Maxwell was even capable of such an emotion.

Which at times was unsettling. But in the end, I figured it out somewhat. It didn't matter if he could love or not. I no longer really knew how to be alone.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

SHOUTOUTS:  
**Alexandria Queen of Dreams -** I always pictured him like that… and my little "VG"-RP buddy hasn't helped it much  
**Brownie/Melody -** the toilet paper wasn't even in that chapter, dork. Haha. Where's emob been for all this while? 17 chapters is a damn lot…  
**wiseupjanetweiss -** update! And faster than last time! Although I think just about anything would be faster than that one…  
**Katatonia -** oh I know. Lol… I've been trying to keep it within the "T" rating so that I don't have to have it hidden from most of the public's view… and I think I've slipped up quite a bit, but… -sigh-  
**Roxy Eno -** yes I'm back… back again… NW's back… tell a friend… -zones out- that was NOT me…**  
SiriusBlackfan5405 -** aww thanks! I always love reinforcement on my Curt character! I think I mess up at times…  
**What Lurks In Shadows - **ha. I made sure this one filled 11 pages in my teeny tiny notebook rather than 8... So hopefully it'll be a bit lengthier ;)  
**Miss Loaf -** ooh yeah! I'm so glad to get back in the swing of things with this story! It really lifts my mood too… lol so who ended up winning the INXS thing? (I don't watch TV… lol)

Chapter Eighteen

I had known from the start that there was going to be trouble. At first I thought Maxwell was the problem, but I was wrong. It was protecting him and hiding him that was the big problem. It had become even worse because Maxwell didn't like to stay up in his room all the time anymore.

Once I caught him going out of the apartment into the hallway. And I freaked out, hauled him back inside, doing more damage to myself off the spines along his back than he was trying to do to me (although I did get bitten). I slammed the door shut while still trying to hold him and overbalanced, fell over and dropped Maxwell hissing and pissed off, half on top of me. He shot off away from me and jumped up onto the kitchen counter, skidding across it before he was able to catch himself, snarling at me all the while.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

**-Going out!-**

I flipped shit.

"You can't! Are you crazy? Jesus, if somebody had seen you-"

He bared his fangs at me, which made me think that he was only going to try and do it again whenever he got the chance. So I had to start locking him upstairs if I ever went out, which as you might have guessed, Maxwell wasn't too happy about. It was a struggle to get him up there every time. So to compromise, I just didn't go out as much. Which got some other people pissed at me when I stood them up, but those people weren't hazardous to my health.

The problem with that, though, is that everyone started to come banging around my door all hours of the day to see what I was doing and I'd just have to hide Maxwell anyway. I ought to have never let him out in the first place and then he wouldn't have known what he was missing and been such a bitch about it, but it wasn't really my fault.

Jack Fairy, especially, was prone to come around at odd hours. He thought I'd gotten into a slump again. I thought he was annoying, but I tolerated him in hopes that he wouldn't come around the next day. But the bad thing about Jack is that he'd somehow acquired a key to the apartment, and found it his divine right to come busting in to check on me whenever he felt like it.

Mostly Maxwell, becauseof his unnaturally good hearing,would hear him coming before Jack got to the door, but we had an uncomfortable number of close calls. One of which involved me naked and worked up on the couch with a pile of clothes Maxwell had shredded on the floor beside me (Maxwell had become a sex addict. It's another thing I sometimes wish I hadn't started with him. Almost. Nevermind, that was a total lie). Of course, Jack was just infinitely amused, giving me that annoying, quiet and irritating smirk, placid laughter in his eyes. He didn't bother taking off his long black coat.

"I suppose I'll come back at a more convenient hour for you," he drawled and I growled back a 'please' through gritted teeth and he smirked and turned and floated off, somehow just barely missing the image of Maxwell waiting annoyed in the darkened hallway. He didn't catch him then; it would be a few more weeks before the trouble started.

It was a Thursday, I remember, and me and Maxwell were sitting around in the kitchen eating breakfast, me sitting at the table and him on top of it (he never sat where he was supposed to) and he was waiting for me to finish and scratching little patterns in the wood of the table when the door swung open and Jack walked in. And immediately dropped his purse.

And Maxwell stared at him and I stared at him and Jack stared at us, but that didn't last for long because Maxwell lunged off the table and tried to attack Jack, kill him probably for being a witness, and I had to try to hold him back.

Fairy, after his initial shock, was inching forward towards the struggling Demon, amazed, enthralled.

"I don't believe it… it was true…"

Claws slashed across my arm as Maxwell tried to get free to tear Jack to shreds.

"Maxwell! Cut it out!"

He went limp but kept up a snarl that I could feel vibrating in his chest as Jack kept coming closer, then finally lifted Maxwell's head with two fingers under his chin, staring disdainfully into the angry black eyes.

"So this is what's happened to Brian. His own Demon survived him… such a beautiful waste…"

I held him closer, felt wings pressing in against my chest, and something else- Maxwell was shivering. He knew the trouble he was in. And I knew it, too.

"Jack… you can't say anything. They'll kill him. You know it."

"And it wouldn't be a pity. For his own good, really. Why try and protect him? Brian obviously wanted him dead."

I denied it.

"He didn't."

Jack shook his head, going to light a cigarette, forgetting his long holder. Maxwell wrinkled up his nose in disgust at the smell, which he'd never done if I had decided to have a smoke.

"You're blind, Curt. Look what he's done to you. You can't even remember Brian properly."

I shook my head. Jack was the blind one… or is it possible for Maxwell to have distorted this that much, that I didn't remember what had really happened? But I wasn't concerned with that then. I was busy trying to keep Maxwell calm and Jack from walking off and alerting the press. Or the cops.

"I don't care." But I did. It hurt me to speak against Brian, even if I knew what was being said about him was a lie. "I want him here."

"Fool." Jack hissed. "You could be doing so much more with your life, doing so much better for yourself… now I see why you aren't. He'll do the same to you he's done to Brian."

He turned to walk away and I let go of Maxwell to reach for him and grabbed his shoulder, begging now.

"Don't. Don't say anything…"

Fairy looked back not at me, but at Maxwell, who had fallen quiet and was sitting staring back at him with solemn black eyes and a distasteful expression. And Jack just shook his head and shrugged off my hand and walked out the door without another word…


	19. Chapter Nineteen

AUTHOR'S NOTE: So I've been away a while. This chapter's also been done for a while, but I had a frustrating little incident of MS word shuts down and deletes the whole thing before you can save it. Then I got busy. So, now I've got this chapter, 20, and 21 on the way. Just a matter of typing up.

SHOUTOUTS:  
**Brownie/Melody -** ahh stop reading ahead! Lol… pretend like you haven't heard about recent developments…**  
wiseupjanetweiss -** -working hard at writing paper- meh! Getting so close now!  
**Roxy Eno -** hey awesome! You've seen my website! Lol… nice to get feedback off it…  
**SiriusBlackfan5405 -** oh man.. I love cliffhangers, in case people haven't noticed yet. Lol… pretty evil of me, I know, but I can't help it  
**What Lurks In Shadows - **-gasp!- not that big a fan of the original movie? Well well then… now I feel really special to get so much attention!  
**Miss Loaf -** what? Curt? Maxwell? Happy? Is it possible? I guess we'll see…  
**Valo - **oooh danke!  
**Alexandria Queen of Dreams -** well, then again, Curt/Demon is very similar to the Curt/Brian in some stories, since he's sportive created off an aspect of Brian's personality.  
**Lady Wormwood -** wow! Such a great review! Lol I'm glad to see you gave us a chance… it's nice to pull people in from outside the norm! thanks!

_Chapter Nineteen_

Maxwell was upset for weeks afterward, and the slightest sound inside or outside or around the flat would send him running for the attic stairs in apparent terror. He knew the trouble he was in. And I was getting paranoid too, locking all the doors, shutting curtains, not really going out much myself.

But no one came around. Not even to visit or ask me out to a party or anything. Or bitch at me for not coming into the studio for all that time. Jack had somehow cut off all my outside communication. And with Maxwell so flighty, mental enough to where he would lash out at me if I came up on him without adequate warning and stop speaking for days at a time, it was unbearable. I didn't even have any booze to help me get through it. Fuckin' torture. I had to get out of there.

And eventually, we started running low on food as well, since I hadn't been out. Gave me a good excuse for leaving. Maxwell whined and begged for me not to leave, overly anxious, going so far as to bite and pull at my shirt, holding me back away from the door. But I just kissed him and reassured him and pet his hair and face until he was calm enough to let me go and to where I didn't want to kill myself out of guilt for leaving. And I told myself that I'd bring him something back. A present of some sort, to make me feel better. So I headed out.

It was cold by then, winter, snowing a bit in that nasty, dirty way it snows in cities. Not like Michigan. There it would snow real snow for hours, none of this slushy shit. Pure. And everything would be coated and soaked in white for days afterwards, with school cancelled and the works. It was one of the only good things about that place.

But gray snow fit here, shitty as that sounds. Gray was the kind of feeling these places had at times.

I passed the TV store, where they used to always have those cameras pointed at the sidewalk to where the TVs in the window would show pictures of you or whoever else was walking by. There was a crowd outside, around the front window, talking animatedly about something or other. I could make out the fear in their voices as I came further down the block, closer to them. I tried to crane my neck to look over them and see what they were seeing. One of them caught sight of me and pointed, and the voices all dropped to a collective accusatory whisper and then they were allpointing as I shoved my way through the crowd to get to the crosswalk.

"Look! There he is!"

"Curt Wild!"

"The man with the demon…"

I stopped dead. Demon? Surely I'd heard wrong. I turned to look back at the TVs and the crowd avoided my eye. And there, on the screens, multiplied twenty times, was Maxwell. I dropped my cigarette. The police had him backed into a corner of the apartment, snarling with his fangs bared and wings fanned to try and keep them away. And shaking.

So I ran. I ran all the way back to the apartment, rounding the corner to find Jack standing outside our door, smoking and looking bored. I growled at him and grabbed his shoulders, pushing him aside, forcing my way into the apartment past the reporters and camera crews. The cops spotted me and them and the SWAT guys tried to drag me back out, kicking and screaming. They deposited me at the door and when they went back in, so did I, and they tried another time.

I jerked free and at the same split second, so did Maxwell, lunging into my arms and knocking me down to the floor, sending a shock of pain through me upon impact. I heard shots fired.

"No! Don't!"

Maxwell yelled in pain inside my mind, the sound louder than I'd heard it, seeming to stop all my thought processes. At the same instant he jerked his wing back and something clipped my shoulder.

"Stop shooting!"

I was clinging to Maxwell, hugging him close and he was wincing and when it fell quiet I was whispering to him as he shivered and dug claws into my skin, tearing bloody marks there without either of us realizing it.

"Don't fight…. don't fight them… they'll hurt you…"

I heard another kind of noise and he flinched in my arms as a tranquilizer buried itself in his shoulder. He was whining and whimpering like he had before I'd left, and as I stroked his cheek and hair, I realized he'd been right. It hurt to hear him like that.

"Maxwell… baby… don't worry, I'll get you out… I won't let them hurt you…"

But he was already falling asleep against my chest and I was pleading with him now and with the men in uniforms and white coats who were coming closer but my vision was fuzzing out, and either I was fainting or I'd been drugged as well and hadn't noticed, and as I blacked out they pulled him away from me with the camera flashes screaming in the back of my eyes…


	20. Chapter Twenty

SHOUTOUTS:  
**Alexandria Queen of Dreams -** ha wow… I luff your muses then. lol  
**Brownie/Melody -** maybe you skipped last chapter… hey we need to work on our German story… then we can post it under LOTR… ha. Let these people see an entirely different side of my mind. Hehe or, rather, what happens when you combine us  
**wiseupjanetweiss -** dun dun dun…. And the answer is… not okay! (but we're talking about Curt, aren't we? That's to be expected)  
**Roxy Eno -** I missed writing it… school really gets to be a bitch sometimes. A muse-killing bitch.  
**SiriusBlackfan5405 -** ahh lucky you, this chapter and the next were already typed up and ready to go… haha. I'm staggering the releases, tho.

_Chapter Twenty_

When I came to, it was back in the hospital again, and it scared the shit out of me. It was looking up and around and seeing all that bright, clean, cold whiteness just like when I was a kid. From somewhere I could hear my heart rate skyrocket, then fall as I started to get hold of myself. But no doctors had come running.

I sat up and looked around, but there still wasn't any sign of anyone being around. Pretty big room, white and chrome and plastic, clean. But nobody there.

It looked like Maxwell had cut me up pretty badly in his panic- I had stitches in a few places I could see, and reading the little note board that was by the bed, I found I had a concussion as well, probably from crashing to the floor. And that bullet wound, that's the only thing I was really getting any heavy pain from. But I wasn't hooked up to any machines other than one to monitor my heart rate. So I pulled those little probes off and headed for the door. I had to find Maxwell.

I expected doctors to come running as soon as I had torn the heart rate machine off, but as I stepped out the door, it was still deserted. Things still got worse, though 'cause I realized this was a lot more of a laboratory than it was a hospital.

I caught a flash of someone in a white lab coat hurrying down the hallway and I went to follow. They had to have been going to wherever Maxwell was. A stat board said we were the only two "patients" on the ward. I followed the nurse down the hall to an automatic door. With a password.

"Shit."

**-Curt!-**

The response was instant. I couldn't see Maxwell but wherever he was, he could hear me. And he was scared.

"Yeah, Max- it's me. I'm locked out. What's the code on this door?"

He didn't answer for a second, then I knew he was thinking about it, replaying the sound of the keypad to decipher it. His hearing was just that fuckin' insanely good. He always knew who I was talking to on the phone, either from hearing their voice or me dialing. He knew combinations to several of the neighbors' safes by listening in the same way.

**-Twenty-six. Pound. Eighty-nine. Pound. Five. Pound. Zero. Zero. Pound.-**

"Thanks."

I started keying in the number.

**-They know you're here.-**

And the doors slid open again before I could finish. Doctors in white coats.

"Mr. Wild."

"Doctor."

"You're awake. Good. Please, come with us."

They reached for my arm. I jerked away.

"Where are we?"

"You are in a government medical facility for treatment."

I scowled.

"Don't lie to me. I know Maxwell is here, too. I saw the charts."

They scowled back to me. But I had them now, the lying bastards.

"Take me to him."

They were all looking between each other and one answers,

"I'm not so sure that is a good thing to do."

"Fuck that. Take me to him."

More looks. Finally,

"Follow us."

Down a hallway, though another set of (unlocked) doors. Into a huge room. Around the walls were all sorts of medical and lab equipment, some familiar, some completely alien.

In the middle was a Plexiglas structure I could only have called a cage. And in it was Maxwell.

"Holy shit."

He looked up towards me. His stats were flying all over the room on all these computerized ticker screens. 18 breaths per minute, 92 beats per minute, 106 degrees Fahrenheit.

I pressed a hand up against the glass and he came forward and I watched all those reading rise and fall. He had his hand pressed against mine, then a doctor approached and he snarled loudly and backed away.

The cage was about as stark as possible. No bed, no sheets, no furniture at all really. And I wondered how he was managing to keep clean. He was miserable, I could tell that much. I turned on the doctors.

"How can you keep him like this?"

"This is a highly specialized government facility. It is very safe, very effective in research."

"That's not what I mean!" I snapped back. "I don't give a shit about how much the government puts into this, or about any scientific shit. Can't you see you can't keep him like this, in a fuckin' cage! He's like us; he thinks, he speaks, he feels- he's not some fucking experiment!"

He gave me an annoyingly patient look.

"No, not an experiment. He is a magnificent specimen of a previously unknown species, and therefore here for observation."

"Well you're doing it all wrong."

"You propose to tell me how to run a scientific facility?"

I banged a fist against the glass of the cage. Maxwell, who had been slumped in the far corner, started.

"You treat your goddamn monkeys better than this! And he's a helluva lot smarter than any of them!"

"He has yet to give any indication that we should think so."

I started at him, incredulous.

"Are you joking me? He fuckin' TALKS!"

The doctors all looked at me strangely, and a realization hit me. I turned to Maxwell.

"You haven't been talking to them!"

Silence, inside my head and out.

"You can't fucking do this, Maxwell! They need to know!"

**-Why? What's the point in it, Curt?-**

I leaned my head against the glass. I could feel the pounding and frustration creeping in.

"Nothing is going to change if you don't. It'll only get worse."

I noticed cameras starting to focus on us. Me talking, seemingly to myself, Maxwell edging closer, up to the glass. He stopped right in front of me, frowning slightly, watching my eyes.

**-I want to leave here.-**

"I know. I'm doing what I can. I don't want you here, either."

I knew how doctors ruined people's lives.

He nodded, sat down. I went to sit on the ground on the other side of the glass. The cameras followed us.

"You have to help me, though."

"**I have nothing to say to them."**

A combination of sound inside my mind and spoken out loud. I could hear a collective murmur of astonishment rise from the scientific community. And I smiled, bitterly, for something at least was going to go my way.


	21. Chapter Twenty One

SHOUTOUTS:  
**jsumptersgirl -** lol right-o. mean old government peoples… in the story at least.  
**Roxy Eno -** I hope you're right, seeing as I haven't written it yet… I've got a couple possibilities  
**Alexandria Queen of Dreams -** ha. I love how everyone's reviews were all anti-gvmt. this chapter….  
**What Lurks in Shadows -** ha. Not so fast on getting the chapter out, but here it is… waiting for my other reviewers, see… guess they'll just have to come along later.  
**Miss Loaf -** ah. Yeah. I can see where the guys wouldn't quite get it. My boyfriend don't. stinkers.  
**Brownie/Melody -** well the other thing's typed up as well, you'll just have to viddy it tomorrow, but are you going to be here? I think not. Damn YIG.

_Chapter Twenty-One_

The following days were a series of people interrogating me.

Where had Maxwell come from? I don't know. How did he get here? I don't know. Why is he here? I don't know. They expected me to be the expert, when they could have simply asked him. I didn't know much.

But I don't believe that they were exactly on speaking terms quite yet. If ever. They had problems with his speaking telepathically because they couldn't understand or study or explain it. He had a problem with speaking aloud because it was a hassle and he had to borrow Brian's voice, quite literally. If it hadn't been for him, Maxwell explained, speech would have been impossible for him. Never quite said why, I mean, he obviously could make sound, since he growled and hissed and roared and all that. Something about forming words, probably.

Some answers I could give, though. And I'd given up fighting with them at this point. The story was out already. It was all over the news and it could only get worse if I didn't say anything and everything was left to doctors and rumors. So I thought, fuck it, y'know? There was no point in resisting, really.

So I told them about Brian's death, how I'd found the letter and then I'd found Maxwell. About how I tried to kill him at first. About how we'd come closer and about how he behaved, what he did, ate, things like that. How I thought he felt and thought. They made me tell and retell about the effects of garnet about a thousand times. They wanted to recreate that effect; I wouldn't allow it.

I would visit him daily. The space he lived in had been made more comfortable, although the atmosphere was still sterile and void of any real comfort. There was a futon couch-bed, a table, chairs, some rugs. A treadmill, which Maxwell held terrible disdain for. Any sharp corner had either been sanded down or padded. The TV was too dangerous; it stayed on the other side of the glass box. Like in an insane asylum.

Maxwell was upset because none of the furniture matched. The scientists failed to share his understanding of a harmonious room.

Mostly when I came in we'd lie on the futon and hold each other and talk in that way where they couldn't hear him, at least;he was only in my head. He would tell me about the tests the ran on him while they milled around processing the results outside the cage around us. He told me about the needles, the pills, the injections and the stress tests and the x-rays and CAT-scans and the questioning and anatomical sketches and so many otherthings I wish I'd notlearned about.

Shocking, degrading, sadistic things I'd expect from one of those Nazi concentration camp labs I'd heard about on a TV show. I saw the scar where he told me they'd cut him, repeatedly, hundreds of times in the same spot, until he'd been unable to heal the cut as he usually would. A process that took hours. And this wasn't a small cut, either, but a pretty good-sized gash, which they'd had to hold him down shaking and screaming to inflict. Over a hundred times.

I myself was subject to the sort of sexual shit they put us through. Even then, as I would lay with him and talk, someone was always there watching, taking notes. They went ballistic if we so much as kissed, even though I'd already told them time and time again that yeah, we'd had sex, neither of us had side effects or whatever shit they were looking for. To him they did more extensive testing in that area, I could never get him to say how much more, but on those days I could feel how hard and tense he was. And angry. It was inhumane, humiliating, and I couldn't do anything about it. If I raised too much of a fuss, I was sedated for the sake of "science." Simple as that. And the tests went on.

Some days when I came in he would be angry; he would hate everyone and lash out even at me. And rather than let me deal with him, the men in white coats would come and "rescue" me and drug him. Sometimes he was already drugged when I came in. But then I knew he'd been fighting, and it was right for him to rebel.

It was killing him, though. There were charts posted all over the place. Some for him and some for me. A lot of numbers I couldn't understand, some I did. The graphs were what made it obvious. My graphs all went upwards, and it was true, physically at least I was feeling better than I had in years. My psychological analyses were still fucked up, but what the hell do you expect?

Maxwell's graphs were going down at first. Then they were plummeting.

He was shaking, and twitching. He could no longer heal himself at all. He lost interest in eating, so they put him on an IV-type thing. He didn't communicate with me anymore. But I could just look and see that he was in pain. Physically, he looked just as magnificent as ever, but there was something different when you touched him. This fragility I could feel but not see. He was dying inside; this place was killing him. Not anything in particular, but everything.

The doctors wouldn't listen to my pleas to free him, end this. So looking at those charts, I made up my mind.


	22. Chapter Twenty Two

SHOUTOUTS:  
**jsumptersgirl -** hehe… now which island would that be? Far-away isn't specific! Far-away from where?  
**What Lurks in Shadows -** I think this one took a bit longer…. But that's 'cause I lost half it in my backpack -  
**Alexandria Queen of Dreams -** Curt is a good boy. Such a lovely lovely muse, he is…  
**wiseupjanetweiss -** ha. We aren't the only ones who feel sorry for Maxwell! -looks around- I hope.  
**Miss Loaf -** oooh thanks that's one killer compliment. I like to know that people like it, but I LOVe to know that people love it! ;)  
**Brownie/Melody -** ahh hey- I wonder when we'll get edits back from that German story we wrote? 'cause I don't want to post it all stupid-like. Ha. We can post it in the "_Gänsebraten_"-LOTR crossover section. hehe

_Chapter Twenty-Two_

I was released. I had no further purpose to the doctors, no medical reason for being there.

Maxwell's condition faded into "terminal." I knew the only way to save him now would be to get him out of here once and for all.

So I made my plans. Slowly, carefully. I couldn't afford to fuck this one up. I became a regular visitor. I learned who was there and when and where and what was going on at that time. I figured out the down times. I figured out who was a little more lenient with the rules, a little more friendly with me than everyone else.

It was slow work, and I was getting anxious. Every time I saw Maxwell he'd slid just a little more. I saw it. And he knew it, too. They stopped running tests; he was too unhealthy for that now, it'd be a bad mark on their stinkin' fuckin' records. Still they wouldn't let him go. But I was ready now.

As you can imagine, the press bugged the shit out of me every time I went near that building. Not even a goddamn Area 51 or anything, just a plain old building. No windows, but still… not very secret for a government thing. But I had to act like everything was normal. So I had to face them like every day even though I was about fuckin' sick with fear from what I was about to do. Take Maxwell away.

The reporters called out their questions and I just scowled and pushed on through. They knew Maxwell was dying, so it wasn't all that abnormal behavior for me. Everyone knew he was dying, even if nobody had formally admitted it. Just like everyone knew I had intentions on suing Jack Fairy for every goddamn thing he was worth. Nor for the money, just to make him as miserable as he'd made me. This hadn't been said officially yet, but the tabloids were right in their guesses. Nobody knew what was about to happen next.

I walked in, all bitchy as was usual for me. It was one of those perfect times I had chosen. When no one was closely guarding anything, people I liked were tired and getting ready to change shifts. Everything good and quiet. But I still had to hurry. My window was shrinking quickly.

I almost blew it all when one of the doctors stopped me and tried to start a conversation. I was impatient. I was bitching. But he let me go, finally, and I practically fuckin' sprinted into the inner labs, I walked that fast. I got to the locked doors and made sure no one was around before talking.

"Maxwell, what's the code?"

I received a blank noise back that told me that he'd heard, but was either confused or didn't know the answer. This had started happening more and more, he just wasn't even up to the mental effort of comprehending what you said sometimes. No matter. Jackson passed by just then, one of my more "buddy-buddy" doctors, looking pretty damn happy indeed.

"Hey Curt! What's going on?"

"Uhhh nothing really. The usual…"

"Yeah- I've worked all night and I'm finally getting to call it quits. They wanted me to stay another two hours, but I said 'hell no'!" he paused. "You need in?" Idiots. What kind of security was this? Jackson was going to be fired for sure when I was done with all this.

"Uhh… yeah, if you can."

"No problem, just don't make any trouble. Not that I think you would, him being like he is…" he sighs.

I shook my head somewhat grimly. And he opened the door and was gone. I slipped inside and the door vacuumed shut behind me and I became aware of a rising panic that I had to suppress before I got any closer to Maxwell. I was afraid he would be able to feel it, would doubt me.

The second set of doors was again open and I went in and then up to the glass of the cage, looking in at Maxwell all curled up into himself. I glanced again at the stat-ticker running along one of the walls. 25 breaths per minute, 105 beats per minute, 102.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Slowly declining day after day.

But I had to hurry. I moved to the glass door, calling his name as I came through.

"Maxwell."

He turned his head weakly towards me, his eyes gone silver-black like mercury in a thermometer from half-blindness, searching a moment, then relaxing, going still.

**-Curt.-** his voice was fuzzy, a radio that you don't quite have tuned to the right station.

"I'm getting you out."

I came closer.

"I'm not going to let them do this anymore."

He sighed. I'd said it so many times before; I think he'd stopped believing me.

"I promise… this is all going to end."

I was up beside him on the bed then, kissing his face.

"Give me your hand."

I asked, and he didn't move,but I took it anyway, and I look in his eyes and saw that he knew I was lying and I plunged the needle into his arm.

It was the most beautiful and horrible thing I'd ever seen as the heroin slammed into his system. Overdose three times over, and I saw the shine return to his hair and skin, the fight back in his eyes as he gripped my hand tighter, stronger.

And I pushed the plunger down further, saw him fade, but quietly, into death. One moment he was beautiful, the next he was gone.

I pulled the needle out and let my grief catch up with me.


	23. Chapter Twenty Three

_Chapter Twenty-Three_

You already know about the following events. The alarms went off when his vitals fell, and the doctors came running. And you all. That was where you found me, curled up with him and crying against his shoulder. My victim, my angel-demon. You dragged me away and put me in handcuffs and took me here, and I'm sad, but I'm not sorry. Even when elation rushed through me when I saw how the drug had revitalized him, I knew I could not stop, couldn't keep him alive. He would be healthy, the tests would start again, and again, it would be all over for him. So I gave him back his life and then took it away. I couldn't bear to see him suffer again, and me helpless as I was as a child to do anything about it. You say what I've done is a crime.

Then I am guilty.


End file.
